"What are the chances that we'll see something with the finesse of the One X with stock software down the road? 'The Nexus devices are Google’s lineup,' explains Kodera, 'but in general, we're very proud of HTC Sense, and we'd like to continue shipping it on every device.' Not exactly encouraging." Big letdown. Not unexpected, but a letdown still. I will never again buy a non-Nexus device.

The whole point is to not buy the phone from a carrier but from the producer.

Unfortunately, the bad habit that is carrier subsidizes is not going away. If a contract offers you a certain amount of data per month, in a price that is cheaper compared to not having the contract and paying list price (which is the norm), and you know are going to consume those data anyway, it makes sense to sign the contract and get the subsidized phone. With smartphones being real data hogs and needing data to do the most interesting stuff, subsidizing is not going away.

A good solution would be to have a law that says carriers are required to subsidize devices from all interested manufacturers. This is already happening in certain countries like the one I live in (even without such law), where there is a government-owned mobile carrier subsidizing everything. You name the phone, they subsidize it. Of course the downside is that the subsidizes are not as high as in the USA.

Unfortunately, the bad habit that is carrier subsidizes is not going away. If a contract offers you a certain amount of data per month, in a price that is cheaper compared to not having the contract and paying list price (which is the norm), and you know are going to consume those data anyway, it makes sense to sign the contract and get the subsidized phone. With smartphones being real data hogs and needing data to do the most interesting stuff, subsidizing is not going away.

Then you have nobody to blame but yourself. You choose a lower price and you pay with inconvenience. I'm not saying that this is a bad trade-off per se, but it is important to realize that YOU, the customer, made a choice here.

A good solution would be to have a law that says carriers are required to subsidize devices from all interested manufacturers. This is already happening in certain countries like the one I live in (even without such law), where there is a government-owned mobile carrier subsidizing everything. You name the phone, they subsidize it. Of course the downside is that the subsidizes are not as high as in the USA.

I have a better idea. Disallow carriers to sell/rent phones. Without crosssubsidies covering costs becomes harder and phone manufacturers and carriers would actually have to compete on the individual merits and prices of their products. Perish the thought!

Oh wait, I have an even easier idea. Leave things like they are and start to price in YOUR preferences.

Unfortunately, it doesn't make the REAL problem go away. Carriers charge absurdly high prices for data and calls if you are without a contract, so if you want to have some reasonable amount data or calls in your phone, you have to get into a contract. This practice is a relic from the days carriers had very limited-capacity networks, so if you wanted to use data and calls for more than a little, you had to essentially promise the carrier you will in fact use them, and for a certain time (12 months) so they could plan their network build-out. Now that they 've mostly built their networks, charging that way doesn't make sense. However, NO nerd ever whines about this (maybe because they don't get out a lot). Compared to this , the subsidizing thing is a minor thing. Phone subsidizing is basically a gift to butter you over from forcing you to sign up for the contract and pay a lot for something (calls and data) that should be offer for much cheaper and without having to get into a contract. Basically subsidizing only annoys nerds that can't get a certain phone from a certain carrier. They way carriers charge for data and calls annoys everyone, because, well, it really is annoying.

PS: And don't get me started about how VoIP doesn't really work in mobile, as they have some kind of priority system where "voice" always gets priority over "data"